A geographic information system (GIS) is a system for archiving, retrieving, and manipulating data that has been stored and indexed according to the geographic coordinates of its elements. The system generally can utilize a variety of data types, such as imagery, maps, and tables. One company involved in geographic information systems is ESRI, which maintains a website at www.gis.com that includes background information on conventional geographic information systems.
Generally, conventional geographic information systems have limited usefulness in both their overall functionality and user interface. For example, any information search capabilities present in conventional GIS and distributed geographic information systems (DGIS) have historically required a user to disambiguate the nature of a search request, selecting search scopes like “address search” or “lot number search” as either an explicit component of the search process or implicitly by allowing only a single scope (most often “address”) within which all search requests are interpreted. In this sense, conventional GIS are effectively hardwired to search and use particular kinds of information.
Moreover, traditional data files from GIS data providers are designed to provide raw data to GIS utilized by mapmakers and other specialists. Due to their specialized nature, the GIS data files do not contain style and other information describing specific ways to render the data contained therein. Instead, it is assumed that the specialists will use the GIS data to create custom maps and other renderings in their own unique styles. The absence of the style and other information in the data files is problematic in DGIS and other systems where it is desirable to render the exact same visualization of the data across numerous clients and platforms.
What is needed, therefore, are geographic information systems and GIS data file formats that provide users with a greater degree of flexibility, utility, and information.